Do you like what you just read?

Ed Koch, RIP: forever Mayor of the Big Apple

In the early 1970s, when I was having a problem with the Veterans Bureau obtaining my GI Bill money, I contacted my congressman, Rep. Ed Koch. The next week, the check was sent. When I taught in Spanish Harlem in a Catholic elementary school in the 1970s, at my behest, my students wrote to Rep. Koch about some issues. They were shocked when they received a speedy and thoughtful reply.

I got to know Ed Koch on a personal level 20 years ago. We met and corresponded many times over the years, and he was always cordial, courageous, and totally honest.

Ed was not only a man of conviction, he was the number-one person in the Jewish community that Catholics could count on to speak out against anti-Catholicism. Indeed, he hated anti-Catholicism as much as he did anti-Semitism, or any other kind of bigotry. His relationship with the late John Cardinal O’Connor was special, and their mutual affection was palpable.